Two Republican senators on President
Barack Obama’s debt commission endorsed a plan by its co-
chairmen, putting half of the 18-member panel on record in
support of a $4 trillion budget-cutting proposal.

Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mike Crapo of Idaho
said today that, while they didn’t like many elements of this
week’s revised proposal, the nation’s fiscal challenges are so
severe they must put aside their objections.

“I would have written a totally different plan,” Coburn
told reporters. “I can’t have my way” and “our country
deserves us to sacrifice like the call we’re going to make to
everyone else to sacrifice to accomplish what we have to
accomplish and that is to get out of this hole.”

Coburn said the plan doesn’t go far enough and should call
for $10 trillion in cuts. The plan is “a beginning,” he said.
“You pass this package and then you do more.”

The panel plans to vote tomorrow on the proposal, with 14
votes needed to forward it to Congress. Thus, five ‘no’ votes
would kill it. Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who
backs the plan, said today he doubts there will be enough votes.
“I frankly never thought we’d get 14” votes, Conrad told
Bloomberg Television.

Against the Plan

Representatives Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, and Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, have said they will vote
against the plan. Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling said today he
is probably against it. “It does not address health care in a
meaningful way,” he told reporters. “Certainly I’m leaning
‘no.’”

Incoming House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp,
a Michigan Republican, said he has “some concerns” with the
proposal, saying he will announce his decision tomorrow. Andy Stern, a former president of the Service Employees International
Union, released his own plan. A Stern spokeswoman said he plans
to announce his vote on the commission’s plan tomorrow.

Panel co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson unveiled
the revised plan that would raise taxes by $1 trillion,
primarily by scaling back or eliminating hundreds of tax
deductions, exclusions and credits such as those letting
homeowners write off interest on their mortgage payments.

Cutting Taxes

The Bowles-Simpson approach also would cut individual and
corporate income taxes. It would reduce spending on Medicare by
more than $400 billion and trim Social Security benefits. It
calls for $1.6 trillion in cuts to so-called discretionary
spending by the government, about evenly divided between
security and non-security related programs.

Other proposal backers are by Senator Judd Gregg, a New
Hampshire Republican; David Cote, chairman of Honeywell
International Inc.; Ann Fudge, former chief executive officer of
Young & Rubicam Inc.; former Congressional Budget Office
Director Alice Rivlin, along with Bowles, a former chief of
staff to President Bill Clinton, and Simpson, a former
Republican senator from Wyoming.

Ryan said today he would oppose the plan because it doesn’t
go far enough in repealing the health-care overhaul approved
earlier this year, which he said would only worsen the
government’s fiscal woes.

“You cannot fix this problem without taking on health
care,” Ryan said. The plan “doesn’t even take a step in the
right direction. It takes many steps in the wrong direction from
my perspective.”

Schakowsky said the plan included too many cuts, including
ones that would come at the expense of Social Security and
Medicare beneficiaries.